When it comes to finding fame at a young age, 27-year-old Zendaya has been there, done that. Her experience, then, must have been useful to Tom Holland, to whom she is an on-screen love interest as well as a real-life one, when he found his profile skyrocketing with the 2017 release of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
In a new profile interview with British Vogue, the Challengers star discussed navigating the moment with Holland. “We were both very, very young, but my career was already kind of going, and his changed overnight,” she said. “One day you’re a kid and you’re at the pub with your friends, and then the next day you’re Spider-Man. I definitely watched his life kind of change in front of him. But he handled it really beautifully.”
This isn’t the first time she’s gone on the record as Holland’s number-one fan, either: In a February interview with Buzzfeed, she spoke in awe of his “rizz.”
“I think someone who has beautiful charisma, not on the Dune cast, but personally works for me, is Mr. Tom Holland,” Zendaya said. She said he had a “natural gift,” and that “he’s great at just talking to people, getting to know people.”
She revealed that she’ll see “as many shows as I possibly can” when Holland takes the London stage for a new production of Romeo & Juliet, saying that she “could not be more proud.”
In the interview, Zendaya displayed an attitude familiar to anyone within sneezing distance of 30, recalling a recent conversation regarding an “archival look” from a label: “I was like, ‘Wait, girl, this is from ’96. Ain’t no 30 years old just yet, OK? This is 27 years old. Wait a minute.’”
Also familiar for many in their late 20s: The idea of having children feeling like a real thing, but the when and how being much less clear. In Challengers, Zendaya plays a retired tennis star who turns to coaching and finds herself in a steamy love triangle, quite a pivot from the high school-aged Academic Decathlon star MJ in the most recent live-action iteration of Spider-Man. In Euphoria, for which she's won two Emmys, too, she plays a high schooler, albeit a less squeaky-clean one.
“I’m always in a high school somewhere,” she told British Vogue of her past roles. “And, mind you, I never went to high school.” She called the change in demographic “refreshing. And it was also kind of scary, because I was like, I hope people buy me as my own age, or maybe a little bit older, because I have friends that have kids, or are having kids.”
“I don’t necessarily want my kids to have to deal with this,” Zendaya said, referring to being on the other side of every smartphone’s camera whenever she steps out. “And what does my future look like? Am I going to be a public-facing person forever?”
Just now, approaching her archival thirties, Zendaya said she’s “figuring out” what she wants to be when she grows up.
“I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor. We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental,” she said. “And I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, ‘Oh, OK, wait a minute: I’ve only ever done what I’ve known, and this is all I’ve known.’ I’m almost going through my angsty teenager phase now, because I didn’t really have the time to do it before.
The original article can be found on Vanity Fair.
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